Portland Playhouse announces 2014-15 season

Post-Depression Pittsburgh as Boy Willie Charles returns home with a plan to sell his family’s heirloom piano so he can buy himself a piece of land. But his sister Berniece won’t let this precious heirloom-and all of the memory, pain, and sacrifice it represents-leave the Charles family. Who will win out when a family’s legacy and its hopes for the future collide?

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (December 2014)
By Charles Dickens
Adaptation and original lyrics by Rick Lombardo
Original music by Anna Lackaff and Rick Lombardo
Music arrangements by Anna Lackaff
Directed by Cristi Miles

Dickens’ classic ghost story returns! Join us for an authentic, music-filled journey to nineteenth-century London in which greedy Scrooge learns his lesson and Tiny Tim has the last word.

Sojourn Theatre’s
HOW TO END POVERTY IN 90 MINUTES
(with 99 people you may or may not know) (January-February 2015)
*World Premiere
Conceived and written by Michael Rohd
Directed by Liam Kaas-Lentz
Devised in collaboration with the cast

It’s not a performance, a workshop, or a public conversation– it’s all these things. HOW TO END POVERTY IN 90 MINUTES… invites audiences to consider the question: How do we talk about, wrestle with, and attack poverty in America? Join Sojourn Theatre and a rotating cast of community cameos for an eclectic 90 minutes of spectacle, dialogue and live-feed hocus pocus that culminates with each audience voting on how to spend $1,000 cash (from ticket sales). Portland Playhouse invites you to participate in this unique experiment of collective decision-making and shared responsibility; an experiment that asks, night after night: Can the arts help make our world a better place?

THE OTHER PLACE (March-April 2015)
By Sharr White
Directed by Brian Weaver

What does it take before we finally “let go” and seek help from those who care about us? Juliana Smithton, an accomplished scientist and pharmaceuticals pitch-woman, is a dominating personality who’s always in command. Until, that is, a fleeting bout of dementia turns her world upside down. What is “real” and what is merely the fabrication of a brain under siege?

Yes, THAT Mr. Burns. Acclaimed playwright, and ex-Portlander, Anne Washburn leads us into an unlikely post-apocalyptic (and post-electricity) future in which survivors pass the time – and maintain a grip on their past – by recounting episodes from The Simpsons (specifically, the episode Cape Feare… DUN DUN DUN DUNNNN). As they are told and retold, these snippets of pop culture become the stuff of epics, myths, and legends among the survivors. Portlanders – who are doubtless aware that Simpsons creator Matt Groening once called Portland home – are in for a wacky, geeky, unapologetically original theatrical treat.